


in the blood

by CountlessStars



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 20:12:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13174359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CountlessStars/pseuds/CountlessStars
Summary: There's always blood on Eugene's hands, no matter how much he tries to wash it away.





	in the blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alyseofwonderland (Esyla)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esyla/gifts).



> Well, I tried to resist this ship. (I...may or may not be lying.) I totally blame [this post](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com/post/166980738498/what-troupes-i-hope-thats-the-right-word-for-it)!
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> **Edit:** Alyse made a [beautiful graphic](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com/post/169087489948/in-the-blood-by-countlessstars-theres-always) inspired by this fic, y'all should go check it out!

 

 

Eugene remembers being seven years old and falling off a tree in the garden. His arm got caught between the branches and one of them grazed his forearm, tore his skin from elbow to wrist. He remembers rolling over and standing up, holding his arm with his other hand like it wasn’t even attached to his body. For a while, he just looked at the wound, at the way bright red started to seep through the broken skin.

He remembers his mother paling at the sight of the blood and smacking the back of his head before dragging him to the bathroom. She washed away the blood and dirt, all the while lamenting about Eugene’s carelessness.

He remembers his _Grandmère_ coming over later that afternoon. She took one look at Eugene’s bandaged forearm and produced a small vial from one of the creases of her flowy skirts. The ointment smelled strongly of herbs Eugene couldn’t recognize, and it stung when she applied it directly on the wound. Eugene remembers biting his lip and blinking away the tears that threatened to spill from his eyes. His _Grandmère_ wrapped the bandages around his forearm once more and didn’t speak of it again.

In two weeks, the wound was completely gone. There was no scar, no rough patch of skin left behind, no strange tingling in his skin. It was as if the wound never existed. Sometimes, Eugene still wonders if it all might have been a dream, but then he remembers the blood—bright red and warm, dripping from his fingers, unlike anything he had ever seen—and he knows it was all real.

It’s what he holds on to, even now. It’s the blood that reminds him the war is real and he’s right in the heart of it.

-

Eugene has grown used to the sight of blood. It doesn’t faze him anymore; he has seen men bleed in dozens of different ways. Gunshot wounds, bayonet wounds, wounds from mortar shells. He has seen skin torn with a broken bone, a single, sharp fragment of white in the middle of the bloody mess. Limbs blown into pieces, several feet away from the rest of a man’s body. Dead men in the mud, their thick blood lazily seeping into the dirt.

By now, blood is a permanent part of his world. The snow is white, the skies are grey and heavy over his head, the uniforms are dull, almost comforting green, and the blood is red. It sticks to his skin, dries into a rusty color that doesn’t wash away, stays in the creases of his palms and behind his fingernails, no matter how hard he scrubs his hand with fresh snow.

Sometimes, he isn’t sure he even wants it to wash away. Sometimes it feels like he’s only _Doc_ if he’s got blood on his hands.

-

No one really talks about the marks, not beyond a few crude jokes, jokes that still leave a bad taste in Eugene’s mouth. It’s almost easier to pretend they don’t exist at all than to face the possibilities they bring. The marks are like an airstrike—not there until they appear and destroy everything in sight. They do no good to anyone and Eugene whispers prayers in his foxhole to keep any more from appearing among the men.

Malarkey and Muck share one, a swirl of bright colors on their palms that has been there since England. The marks connect them, somehow, and Muck still ends up blown to pieces in a frozen foxhole. Gone. A piece of rosary covered with dirt the only evidence he ever existed.

Malarkey stares at his hand for hours after the artillery attack, while all the men avoid looking in his direction. His mark is still there, right in the middle of his palm, the joyful colors transformed into something grotesque and mocking.

It takes Eugene four tries to light his last cigarette. He doesn’t taste it at all.

-

They’re in Haguenau. There’s a roof above Eugene’s head and he gets to sleep on a bed with something that resembles a mattress. It would feel almost civilized, if it weren’t for the artillery raining down on them every few hours.

Spina watches the smoke waft through the air after another bombing and mutters something about luck. Eugene doesn’t reply. He clutches his medical bag just to make sure it’s there.

Another airstrike comes as Eugene rummages through the meager supplies. He throws himself under the table, fumbles with his helmet clumsily and waits. A tense silence follows after the last explosion and Eugene holds his breath, listens for shouts for medic.

He’s leaping up before his brain even registers the word, running out of the building and across the road as fast as he can.

It’s still not fast enough. Kiehn is lying in the mud, unmoving. Dead. Eugene’s boots slip as he kneels down next to him to take a closer look, but there’s nothing to be done. His shoulders drop as he lets out a shaky breath. Within a few seconds, a crowd gathers, watching the scene silently. The quietness is almost overwhelming, somehow louder than the explosions still ringing Eugene’s ears.

Eugene looks up and finds solemn faces looking down at him. He scans the crowd and clenches his teeth, suddenly filled with inexplicable anger. He’s about to say something, anything, when his eyes find Speirs standing among the men. Speirs looks straight into his eyes, unblinking, and Eugene feels like all the blood in his veins has been replaced with icy water. He feels trapped.

It’s Speirs who looks away first, barking out orders in a steady voice. He leaves without looking at Eugene again.

-

That afternoon there are showers, a luxury Eugene has almost forgotten. He disrobes, gets under the stream of water that’s just barely warm, but still feels boiling hot on his skin.

Eugene claws at his own hands until he finally gets all the blood from underneath his fingernails. When he gets out of the showers and dries himself, his hands are clean and he doesn’t recognize them at all.

Later that day, when he’s sorting the supplies, his hands shake. He clenches his fists, slams them together angrily, but the tremors don’t stop. (They never shake when they are drenched in blood.)

That night, he holds his hands in front of his face—two pale ghosts emerging from the dark. He stares at them without blinking, until he sees dark spots starting to appear over them, wet and glistening. He shuts his eyes and holds his breath until his head spins.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he’s jolted awake by a call for medic.

He’s late again, too late to do anything but watch Jackson die, his eyes flooded with panic and desperation as he chokes on air and his own blood. Eugene kneels next to Jackson’s body and clenches his fists so hard he thinks his bones might just snap. Everyone avoids looking in his direction—even Babe can’t hold his gaze for more than a few seconds. Eugene feels bile rising in his throat.

Someone covers Jackson’s body with a blanket and then there’s nothing left for Eugene to do. The air in the room is stale, suffocating. He almost trips over his own feet as he hastily leaves the building, not meeting anyone’s eyes.

He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he walks until he is alone, until he only hears his own steps and the short, unsteady breaths coming out of his mouth. He turns around a large building with broken windows and leans against the wall.

Eugene closes his eyes, then snaps them open again when he sees Jackson trashing on the table again, struggling to take a breath. Eugene looks at his hands—they are covered in blood. It looks almost black in the night that surrounds him.

A sound of footsteps grows louder and Eugene looks up to see Speirs appearing from around the corner. Eugene bites the inside of his cheek and keeps quiet. He looks ahead as Speirs approaches and leans against the wall, close enough that their shoulders are almost brushing.

Speirs doesn’t say a word as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a creased pack of Lucky Strikes. Eugene doesn’t even have to look at him to know this—the motion is familiar, transcending men and ranks. Speirs puts a cigarette between his lips and lights it. After a single puff, he holds it in front of Eugene’s face.

Eugene hesitates, but Speirs makes an impatient motion with his hand and Eugene takes it. If Speirs sees that his fingers are streaked with drying blood, he doesn’t seem to mind.

“Thank you, sir,” Eugene says through the smoke coming from his lungs. Speirs doesn’t reply.

Eugene smokes until the cigarette starts to burn at his fingers, then he lets it drop into the mud at his feet.

“Doc,” Speirs says.

Eugene lifts his eyes from the mud and finds Speirs looking at him. His eyes are black in the night that surrounds them, glistening with something that Eugene can’t place.

Eugene’s tongue feels too heavy in his mouth to form any words. Speirs nods and gives him another sharp look before walking away.

Eugene feels a wave of something unfamiliar rushing through him, hot and cold at the same time. He clenches his fists and feels the roughness of drying blood all over his hands. He rubs his palms together, watches the blood flake away. One dark spot, a smudge of blood across his wrist, resists the scrubbing and Eugene impulsively spits into his hand and rubs the place until his skin burns.

The spot stays unchanged.

Eugene scratches it with blunt fingernails—lightly at first, then, when nothing happens, roughly enough so that he hisses in pain. The smudge doesn’t move. Eugene’s heart pounds wildly as he brings his wrist closer to his eyes. It’s dark, but he sees it as clearly as if the sun was right above his head.

His wrist is ghostly white in the night and across it, a dark smear of blood. His mark.

-

Eugene doesn’t bother hiding it and no one notices—everyone is so used to seeing blood on his hands that their gazes slide right across the mark without really looking. Or, if they do see the patch of blood for what it really is, they don’t say it out loud.

He would almost laugh at the irony of the situation, but every time the edge of the mark pokes out of his sleeve, he feels something heavy turning restlessly in his stomach, gnawing at his lungs and crushing him from the inside out.

He doesn’t think about the _other_ mark.

-

Eugene doesn’t remember how he gets back—he might have hitched a ride on one of the trucks, or maybe he walked all the way into the town. His feet are numb enough it just might be true.

He walks until finds himself in front of the building they are staying in. A part of it used to be a butcher’s shop—there’s still meat hooks hanging in the windows. Eugene feels a wave of nausea washing over him and he looks away.

The house is quiet when he opens the door, only the snoring and occasional sleep-talking interrupting the silence. He lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

There is a small sink in the room he sleeps in. The porcelain is chipped and half of it is dirty with god knows what, but it’s working well enough. Eugene turns the brass knob and lets the icy water run through his fingers. He scrubs his hands, turns them under the stream until his joints feel stiff with cold.

The wood in the hallway creaks with light footsteps and Eugene’s back tenses when the sounds stop just outside of the room.

He turns and sees Speirs. The man must have wanted Eugene to hear him, because his next steps are completely silent.

“Sir,” Eugene hears himself say. His voice sounds rough, hurts his throat on the way out.

Speirs watches him for a moment. Eugene doesn’t even attempt to make sense of the situation. His eyes jump across Eugene, the whole room, calculating. “How long have you been there?” he asks, takes a step closer.

Eugene looks at his hands, at the water dripping from his fingertips. They are red from the cold and the scrubbing, and they still don’t feel clean. When he glances up, he finds Speirs looking at the blood-red smudge on his wrist. “Since they found it,” Eugene says. He tries to count the hours, but his mind draws a blank.

Speirs lets out a breath and steps even closer.

“Get some sleep,” he says. It sounds almost kind.

Eugene shakes his head, thinks about the supplies that he has to sort out to send to that goddamned place, about how nothing he can do will be enough. “Sir, I–”

Speirs interrupts him with a glare that cuts right through Eugene. “That’s an order,” he barks out. Then, softer, with his head tilted to the side, “You won’t help anyone if you drop dead from exhaustion.”

“Yes sir,” Eugene mumbles.

“Good,” Speirs says and offers Eugene a small smile that goes through him like a bullet. Without another word, he leaves.

Eugene’s heart keeps pounding wildly in his chest long after the sound of the footsteps fades into silence.

-

He leans against the wall of some unnecessarily luxurious building and closes his eyes, lets the sun paint abstract shapes on his eyelids.

He feels someone approaching even before he hears the ground whispering with footsteps, before a shadow darkens the bright yellow behind his eyelids.

“Doc,” Speirs’ voice says too close to him and Eugene’s eyes snap open. For a moment, the world is blurry and bathed in cold colors.

Eugene doesn’t even have the time to react before Speirs grabs his wrist and twist it upwards. His fingers tighten, squeezing just around the edges of the mark. Eugene doesn’t look at where their hands are connected—he watches Speirs, but he can’t decipher the expression on his face.

“Who’s the lucky girl?” Speirs asks, still looking at Eugene’s mark.

Eugene takes a deep breath. “I don’t know,” he says.

Speirs’ eyes flicker to Eugene’s face. His index finger presses into the pulse point on his wrist.

“Shame,” Speirs says. His face is blank but his eyes are filled with something dark and hungry.

When Speirs leaves, Eugene closes his eyes again, but the sun doesn’t feel quite as comforting anymore.

-

They are surrounded by snow-covered mountains and yet—Austria is warmer than any other part of Europe. The chill inside Eugene’s bones slowly dissipates into something softer, less dangerous. He watches the other men laugh and joke and for a moment, feels at ease. It almost reminds him of home and he finds himself imagining, _hoping_.

The calm doesn’t last. The war is almost over and yet it doesn’t change a thing—the men are still dying every day, only now their deaths seem even more useless.  

Eugene watches the blood seep through the bandages around Chuck’s head and, with a lump in his throat, wonders how many brain surgeons can possibly live in the Austrian countryside. The tires squeak at every turn and in front of him, Speirs curses loudly as the engine of the car groans in protest. Eugene’s leg is wedged in between the front seats. It’s uncomfortable, but he hardly notices anything at all.

The jeep comes to an abrupt stop, Speirs jumping out and Eugene turns to look at Chuck’s limp body. He grabs his hand and squeezes it, feeling completely useless. Vaguely, he registers Speirs yelling and pointing his gun at a man—a doctor. After a tense moment of silence, the man gets behind the steering wheel and Speirs all but throws himself into the passenger seat.

Speirs’ shoulder presses into his knee and Eugene jumps a little, moves his leg to offer as much space as he can, but Speirs leans farther back, not breaking their contact. His gun is in his lap and his eyes are on the road appearing from the darkness in front of them.

They haul Chuck inside and the man tells Speirs to leave, his English clumsy with fear and anger. Speirs opens his mouth to argue, but then his eyes drop to the blood-soaked bandages around Chuck’s head and he leaves without a single word, the door slamming shut behind him.

Eugene doesn’t know how long it takes. How long he uselessly stands there, watching Chuck’s pale face as the doctor works. How many prayers he says under his breath, in English and French and in languages that don’t even exist.

When the doctor finally lifts his head and nods, Eugene feels like he can’t breathe, even as he feels the air tickling at the back of his throat, expanding in his lungs. Without thinking, he wraps a shaky hand around his wrist and squeezes. The mark tingles under the pressure and Eugene releases it with a hammering heart.

A few minutes later, he stumbles out into the darkness, his legs heavier than they have been in weeks. As soon as he sets a foot outside of the building, a hand grabs his shirt and he’s being slammed into the wall. The impact doesn’t knock out the breath out of his lungs, just barely. He sees stars swimming at the edge of his vision.

“Tell me,” Speirs says. His face is just a few inches from Eugene’s; he can feel the warmth of Speirs’ breath on his skin, a sharp smell of alcohol coating his words.

Eugene swallows. “He’s alive,” he tells Speirs and tightens his shaking hands into fists.

The only indication of Eugene’s words being heard is a deep, ragged breath that leaves Speirs chest. Eugene looks somewhere behind Speirs, sees only the blackness of the mountains looming over them, feels like they might crush them all at any moment.

The hand in his shirt tightens and Eugene’s eyes snap back to Speirs just as he takes a hold of Eugene’s hand, the one with the mark, and brings it up, presses it into the wall next to Eugene’s head.

“Good," Speirs says, eyes on Eugene’s wrist. “That’s good,” he repeats, this time in a whisper that sets Eugene’s mind on fire.

Eugene’s tongue feels heavy in his mouth, but he spits out his next words despite it. “We don’t know how much damage...” he starts, doesn’t know how to continue.

“You’ve done what you could,” Speirs says, tilts his head closer to Eugene’s ear.

Eugene’s eyes fall closed, the darkness behind his eyelids just a shade deeper than the world around them. He can’t bring himself to open them again—not when he feels Speirs’ hand still clutched into his shirt, pressing Eugene’s dog tags into his skin almost painfully. Not when rough fingers trace the red smudge on his wrist, barely warm but leaving trails of fire as they slide across Eugene’s mark. Not when he feels Speirs’ words on his skin more than he hears them, damp and soft and surreal. “You’ve done your best.”

Eugene shrugs and digs the fingers of his free hand into the wall behind him, uselessly searching for something to hold onto.

A soft breath of warm air across Eugene’s jaw sends his heart hammering wildly and Speirs must feel it because he loosens his grip on Eugene’s shirt, splays his hand across his chest instead, taps his fingertips against where Eugene’s heart is about to leap out of its place.

All air leaves Eugene’s lungs in a sharp gasp and his head spins when he feels Speirs’ lips curl into a smile against his jaw.

Eugene’s whole body tenses, thrumming with dizzying electricity that makes him want to growl, dig his fingers into hot skin, trace every muscle with his teeth and tongue. He tries to take a steadying breath but his lungs don’t cooperate and he’s only left gasping for air.

And then, in a split second, before Eugene even realizes what’s happening, Speirs is gone.

Eugene listens to the sound of Speirs’ boots retreating, getting quieter until it’s drowned in the soft breeze that dances in between the buildings. He only opens his eyes when he’s sure that his knees won’t buckle underneath him.

The Austrian summer night feels cold without another body so close to his. Eugene suppresses a shiver and starts walking in the direction of a bed, then changes his mind and sits down onto the first patch of grass he comes across. He lights a cigarette—it burns down to nothing before Eugene remembers to take a drag. He fishes another one out of his pocket and puts it into his mouth, unlit.

He watches the mountains until the morning sun colors them with pure gold.

 

 

 


End file.
